Fruit Stall

We were pleased to get out of the hustle and bustle of the big city. The open road is much quieter for one. Cairo is a big dirty noisy city. As fun as it was to visit, we are country folk and we're not accustomed to city life. What we all wanted was a shower and I could forsee a squabble over who got the first shower when we got back to the hotel in Sharm El Sheikh.

Once we had settled in George showed us his mosquito bites. At least I hope they are mosquito bites. Two on his arm and one on each knee. He's not used to having mosquito bites. We don't have many in our part of Scotland.

While still in the fertile Nile region, I noticed fruit stalls by the side of the road. Because I merely mentioned it, the bus pulled over so I could have a better look. I could really get used to being indulged like this. This fruit stand sold mangoes and two different varieties of melon. A yellow smooth skinned one (not a honeydew) and dear old watermelon. The watermelons were proper sized too. Not the bitty things that we get imported to the UK.

There were some goats being fed in a little makeshift sun shelter. The expensive cardboard boxes were to hold fruit going into the city. The other fruits were kept in homemade crates. I kept thinking of The Birdman of Alcatraz when I saw these crates. Remember in that movie how Burt Lancaster had made a bird cage by carefully slicing up a crate? There was a similar thing going on here.

They grew these mangoes and melons nearby. The mangoes were ripe and ready for eating.

Henry bought some mangoes to eat on the way down the road. They were only £1.5 per kilo (tourist price). Back in the UK they are £1.5 each and the never reach that super sweet tree ripened perfection that we've got at this fruit stall. The stall owner, probably the farmer himself peeled a couple of mangoes and handed them around. You've never seen a bunch of happier stickier faces.

Here is our guide having a nice mango. This guy speaks Arabic, Russian and English. Another graduate from the University of Cairo, working in the tourist industry. I think he told me that his degree was in Russian. Handy as there are loads of Russian tourists in Sharm El Sheikh.

I am grateful that we always travel with baby wipes. We really needed them to de-stickify after our festival of fruit. One of the yellow melons was purchased, sliced and put into our cooler for later.

Fuzzy photo of farmers with donkey cart across the road from the fruit stall. There were some women, dressed from head to foot in black herding some goats through the dusty scrub, but I failed to get a good or even blurry photo of them. After we left this area, we didn't see green in the landscape again.